As polling results (and, I suspect, internal polling) show the GOP statewide slate is showing promise, two things are happening:

First: The DFL is throwing everything they can find against the wall. Look for a raft of abstruse “Campaign Finance Board” accusations – the political equivalent of “Karen” demanding you wear a mask while out walking. It’s impossible to run a campaign without violating some rule or another, and everyone involved knows it; the charges are there purely to logroll the gullible.

Second and less predictable? Donald Trump, looking to burnish his record as a kingmaker, has bungee-corded into the state with a raft of endorsements. Earlier this week he endorsed Kim Crockett and Scott Jensen.

The bad news? It gives the DFL another framing point to use to try to seize control of the message.

Jensen’s campaign is reacting, I think, appropriately:

“…ultimately, we only care about one endorsement: the support of Minnesota voters. We are continuing to barnstorm this state, engage in meaningful conversations, and work every day to earn the votes of Minnesotans by fighting Walz-Biden inflation, ending our crime epidemic, protecting parental rights, and funding students, not broken institutions,” Jensen said.

A source close to a statewide candidate told me yesterday that it was not the news they were hoping for: they were just starting to get the conversation in their statewide race focused on issues rather than personalitymongering; Trump’s endorsement may have complicated that.

The good news, maybe, possibly, if you’re a GOPer who’s forgotten what contending in an opinion poll, much less winning an election feels like? Trump, burned by a couple of bad calls in primaries, is likely saving his last-minute bungee endorsements for candidates who’re going to burnish his record. Which means – I’m guessing here, but not without some reason – that the GOP’s internal polling is looking more like Trafalgar and less like Survey USA.

Build it, and they will buy.

You know it’s good when the people it’s aimed at respond “actually, that’s not accurate at all…”

Governor Walz picked up a vital endorsement yesterday:

So let’s make sure we get this straight: An incumbent who dunks on Scott Jensen for being a “conspiracy theorist” is proud of his endorsement by a 9/11 truther who was an enthusastic employee of RT, Vladimir Putin’s propaganda network.

Good one, Governor Walz.

This is what every family in the Minnesota public school system faces todaym. This person is running for the Centennial school board:

This is the educational/industrial compex’s priority.

This is on the ballot in two weeks. Never forget it.

UPDATE: And the consequence of school board members like her aren’t remotely, uh, academic:

“Fridays and breaks can never come soon enough for me this year. I’ve always been able to make it to MEA without needing time off to recover, but not this year. This year I feel like I’ve been run over by a train every day I leave. This week I politely asked a student, that wasn’t supposed to be in my room, to go to her class. This was four minutes after the bell had rung. Her response, ‘Quit talking to me. Get out of my space.’ I was 3-4 feet away. I then calmly repeated that she needed to leave, and she responded with, ‘Shut the fuck up you bitch ass ho.’”

This is an inevitable result, not only of people like the woman in the first tweet, but of the concrete policy prescriptions of “Pacific Educational Group” – the San Francisco consulting firm employed by the Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Edina and many other metro school districts.

The story: woman in Hibbing arrested and charged with stealing Pete Stauber’s campaign materials.

In a Friday press release, the Hibbing Police Department announced that Lisa Linnea Fitzpatrick, 61, has been charged under Minnesota Statutes for intentionally removing mail from a mail depository without claim of right.

The offense is a felony and carries a maximum sentence of 3 years in jail, a $5,000 fine, or both.

The story behind the story:

Go ahead, Ms. Fitzpatrick. Take the deal, and give up the MNDFL officials who told you to do it.

If the SPPD and Ramco Attorney arrested and charged sign thieves, they’d need to rent a barge on the Mississippi to hold the suspects awaiting arraignment.

Or they would, if Republicans in Saint Paul bothered putting up signs anymore. Back when I still tried, the half-life was about six hours. Not sure we’d even be able to test John Choi on this.

I’m going to guess the relentlessly intellectually-entitled Ms. Sarandon thought she was tweeting about Republicans:

It was probably 4-5 years after I read Saul Alinski’s Rules for Radicals that I noticed one of his rules – essentially, “accuse your opponent of doing what you’re doiing” – basically is the actor’s side of Berg’s 7th Law.

UPDATE: Whoops. I’m informed that Ms. Sarandon may have become, if (certainly) not a Republican, at least a skeptic of the Democrat Party, and that my lede may be wrong, and she may actually be referring to the Democrats.

It may indeed be a season of miracles.

Democrats like to bleat that Ronald Reagan couldn’t be elected in today’s GOP.

It’s rubbish – watch “A Time For Choosing” and ask what he’d have to change today – but I’d answer in response that Paul Wellstone would either have trouble getting endorsed in today’s DFL, or would have to displace hard to the left to stay viable.

It’s exceptionally hard to believe that it was 20 years ago today Wellstone died:

The crash – which DFLers of my acquaintance spent years was a hit job carried out by an RNC sniper – handed the election to Norm Coleman.

The Coleman/Wellstone race was, in fact, what put this blog on the map (checks notes) twenty freaking years ago: covering the DFL’s bizarre, often antisemitic attacks on Coleman, and another prominent Minnesotan’s clod-footed assault on Coleman, got me the Instalanches that launched this blog from 5 hits a day into the 3-4 digit range.

Shot: “Stop all that conservative talk or we’ll tell your dad”

Y’see, Jensen’s father was apparently a Democrat, and if there’s one thing “liberals” believe it’s that sons gotta follow their fathers footsteps in absolute lockstep.

Chaser: “Keith Ellison is so great…uh, my, you’re a little fella!

Remember – David Brauer is one of the deans of Twin Cities journalism.

Shot: Kamala Harris denies supporting the MN Freedom Fund, a group that opposes cash bail by bailing out “indigent” often-violent offenders, with occasional disastrous results…

…after gleefully supporting it two years ago:

“He who controls the past, controls the future. He who controls the present, controls the past”.

Chaser: Ellison runs away from the “Defund” movement he and his son championed last year.

This email was – ostensibly – leaked by a DFL operative.

If true, it indicates that the DFL is having a hard time getting people out on the street for the DFLin the Metro and ‘burbs:

I’m both pessimistic and a little tiny bit…not “paranoid”, per se, but I tend to try to assume that one’s opponents is smart enough to play mental games with you.

Still – if true, it explains a lot of things:

• The Trafalgar polls just might correlate with reality
• Angie Craig’s orgy of TV spending that indicate her internal polling has been worrying her for six months now
• Ellison, Blaha and Simon turning up for debates; the “conventional wisdom” has it that debates only make sense if you believe the risk of making a campaign-scuttling flub is outweighed by the opportunity to goad your opponent into making a bigger one, because you need it.
• Governor Klink’s evading debates – indicating he may be husbanding a lead too small to want to risk a disastrous performance that drags the Attorney General, Secretary of State and Auditor even worse than the polls show they are doing.

Remembering how the DFL acted in all of their statewide races since 2012, sitting on leads that their internal polling showed were pretty comfy in hindsight?

It wasn’t like this back then.

2006.

That’s how long it’s been since I’ve seen a poll – any poll generally considered reputable – that showed a GOP statewide candidate, a Governor, Attorney General, Auditor or Secretary of State – ahead in a race before an election.

We’ll come back to that.

A few weeks back, my NARN colleague Jack Tomczak and I were invited to speak at a Liberty Tea Party Patriots meeting. The invite came right after the Survey USA poll, right after the State Fair, that showed Scott Jensen down by 18 points. It was a dismal couple of weeks to be a Republican. The organizers wanted someone to help put the poll in context. Jack lives and breathes that stuff, and I have done a little dabbling on the subject as well.

In the intervening weeks between the SUSA poll and a Trafalgar poll that showed the governor’s race at five points, things got a little brighter – a poll with a history of measuring Republican turnout adequately accurately showed us losing a little less badly than Jeff Johnson in 2018.

So when the meeting came around, Jack pretty much had the line of the evening. I’ll paraphrase it: if you’re looking for a poll that shows Jensen leading? There is none. The only way to fix that is to get out there and work like hell to change that by election day.

And he was right.

And he still is.

The good news: another Alphanews Trafalgar Poll shows Jensen ahead by half a point.

The bad news: An Alphanews Trafalgar Poll shows Jensen ahead by half a point.

I’ll explain.

Special Sauce: It’s a Trafalgar Poll, sponsored by a right-leaning news organization. A DFLer might squawk “Hah! It’s a conservative-leaning poll sponsored by a conservative propaganda mill! OF COURSE they show Jensen leading!”

Alphanews is indeed Minnesota’s main conservative-leaning daily news source. But dismissing Trafalgar because “it’s Republican” is just as intellectually dishonest as dismissing Survey USA or PPP or Quinnipiac because they’re Democratic. Are the facts presented right, or are they wrong? That’s the only question that matters.

Let’s focus on facts, not parties, for a moment.

Trafalgar was also pretty much the only poll that showed Trump with a shot at winning in 2016; they called the much better-than-expected showing for the GOP in Congress in 2020. The theory is that whatever methodological “special sauce” (to borrow David Brauer’s term) Trafalgar brings to the table that helps them to measure Republicans, who seem to be stubbornly undercounted by Survey USA and 538 and the like, might give this poll a little extra credibility.

Pollsters’ special sauce is a little like boy-band popularity; it comes and goes fast.

Remember John Zogby? He was the “It” boy of the 2000 race. Whatever his special sauce was, it hit the mark in the Bush/Gore race. But thet was a long time ago; By 2008, Zogby was background noise; he still does polling, but the results rarely seem to track observed reality. His special sauce hit its shelf date.

Rasmussen? They nailed 2004, and stayed relevant through most of the decade. They’re still out there – but nobody’s called him the best in the business in quite some time.

Nate Silver and 538? Quinnipiac? SUSA? Each of them went through a period as the “it” poll. And just as surely as New Edition handed off to Bell Biv Devote, to Boys 2 Men, and thence to New Kids on the Block, then Backstreet Boys and NSYNC to One Direction to BTS, every few cycles brings a new “it” pollster.

Trafalgar was “it” in ’16 and ’20. They didn’t get a lot of credit for it in the media, since Trafalgar brought them bad news of Republican strength.

Do they still have their special sauce?

We’ll know two weeks from Tuesday, I guess.

So what does the poll actually say?

Half a point.

But there are 3.9% worth of voters polling for four third-parties, all of them somewhere left of center: the remains of the “Independence” party, Jesse Ventura’s vanity organization, which was and remains moderate-libertarian left, the two legal weed parties (mostly libertarian left) and of course the Socialist Workers. Will the Democrats in those parties come “home” to the DFL to beat back the Red horde? DFLers tend to fall into line after they get their rebellions streaks out of the way.

And there are another 3.9% undecided. Toward whom will they break?

Well, one hint comes further down in the poll:

Presuming, as always, that Trafalgar’s methodology is sound, Biden is not polling well in Minnesota. One suspects that in most cases it’s due to inflation, crime, fuel prices, stagflation and oncoming war.

But Minnesota being Minnesota, you have to figure some of the disapproval is from the left.

Still – it may point to a lack of enthusiasm among Democrat voters to turn out for Walz.

Undercards: All qualifications about special sauce aside? The other Constitutional Office races might prompt some optimism, if I were more susceptible to it:

Here’s the AG race:

A five point margin with 4.5% undecided?

If – as always – accurate, that might explain Ellison’s drive to slap a coat of “tough on crime” paint over his “Anti”-fa frenching past.

State Auditor?

The only candidate who was straight up leading in the September Trafalgar poll, added a point to his margin – with six points of Pot Party candidates, and nearly 10% still undecided. I’m a little less sanguine than the numbers might warrant; this is the lowest profile race of the bunch. All those undecideds – the ones that vote, anyway – will most likely follow the top of the ticket. The question is, who is the top of the ticket – Tim Walz, or Joe Biden?

Secretary of State: Kim Crockett is a good personal acquaintance. Say what you will about the campaign she’s run – the DFL has certainly put money into running against her.

And if Trafalgar’s right, there might be a reason for that:

All that money – millions and millions of dollars from Progressive plutocrats. Steve Simon is actually having to put money into TV ads of his own – something I don’t recall seeing in any systematic way, ever.

And this – presuming, as always, Trafalgar’s secret sauce is valid – is what they got for it. two points, with almost nine undecided. And those nine will likely break toward the top of the ticket, whoever that is.

And I don’t recall even seeing a Kim Crockett ad.

So – the good news: Presuming Trafalgar is right, there is hope.

The bad news: Presuming Trafalgar is right,, it’s a razor-thin margin, and the Governor and Constitutional Officer races are going to depend heavily on:

• Whether Progs “come home” to the DFL from the weed parties, and
• Which way “undecideds” break, and
• How much effect Bidens apparent unpopularity in Minnesota drags the DFL ticket, and overcomes any corruption that might exist in the metro.

Either way, Jack was right. If you care about Minnesota not collapsing further, and you’re not volunteering time or money for a candidate, statewide or legislative? What the hell are you waiting for?

A friend of the blog emails:

These people see downtown Target locking down everything and see it as corporate greed.

I hear about it and think of failed policies that create a mass of poverty stricken people who have fallen morally into the way of a Les Miserables story, where stealing is justified. It of course is justified by the very same people upset by the Target locking down basic supplies. It’s a cycle, which will continue to infinity until the cycle is somehow broken. 

We have an entire generation of over-schooled, under-educated people who think of the world in terms of corporate black hats and social justice white hats.

SCENE: Mitch BERG has found a cache of hard-to-find chili paste at a Vietnamese grocery store, and is putting a half dozen in his basket. Distracted, he doesn’t see Avery LIBRELLE rounding the corner, wearing an N95 mask.

LIBRELLE: (Muffled behind mask) Mrrg.

BERG: Oh, ffffaaaaercrying out loud, how ya been…

LIBRELLE: (Muffled) Jw Shlll hm nmmr prfmkmmd m kem in crm.

BERG: Jim Shultz, the GOP candidate, has never prosecuted a case in court?

LIBRELLE: Ylm .

BERG: Huh. OK. Got a list of cases that Keith Ellison has prosecuted?

LIBRELLE: Hm pm Drmk Shmvm m prmm.

BERG: He put Derek Chauvin in prison? Sure – in exactly the same way that I fixed the plumbing in my bathroom. I hired a professional. The prosecuting attorney of record was a private practice lawyer that Ellison hired.

LIBRELLE: Hm rm thm cmmm!

BERG: He ran the case? Sure – the same way the MNDOT Commissioner runs a road construction project. MNDOT guy manages. He doesn’t do the surveying, engineering, or driving the steamrollers. Ellison managed the lawyers. But if he ever went into the courtroom, he was there as an interested spectator.

LIBRELLE: Thm Slmstm gmrm um fm Unumfm stem thmm “hm brm hm ekfpmfmm em m lorr tm br emrm deh”!

BERG: The Solicitor General of the United States said he”brought his experience as a lawyer to bear every day”? Perhaps. But that didn’t make him a prosecuting attorney. He has never sat at the prosecution table in a trial.

Long story short – do you list of cases where Ellison has been an actual lawyer of record for the prosecution in a criminal case?

LIBRELLE: Duh ym hem umm frm Schlmmm?

BERG: Do I have one for Schultz? No – but he’s never claimed to have one, and he’s not the one using his vaaaast courtroom experience to try to separate himself from Schultz.

So – you have that list of cases for which Ellison has been the prosecutor of record?

(Brief pause. Then LIBRELLE’s face goes red, and steam starts shooting from under the N95).

STORE CLERK: Did he…er…sh… (BERG shrugs shoulders) did this person try the chili paste?

BERG: You’d think.

And SCENE

A friend of the blog emails:

Certain people in the media know who [Umbrella Man] is and won’t reveal it.

Do you think he’s connected or related to a well known DFL elected official or donor?

It’s starting to look that way.

If Big Leftymedia felt that the identity could impugn the GOP before an election, or reinforce the “the whole right is a bunch of wytespremecists” narrative, we’d hear about it at the top of every newscast for the next three weeks.

When people stop trusting the media to tell the stories impartially, democracy takes a hit. And anyone who trusts our media to tell the story impartially is an irredeemable pollyanna.

Mike Freeman on why he doesn’t bother prosecuting straw buyers:

So let’s sum it up.

Minneapolis has an epidemic of shootings because:

1. The city is full of illegal guns, because
2. the DFL county prosecutor doesn’t prosecute gun crimes, in part because…
3. the DFL-controlled House hasn’t increased the penalties, and also because…
4. the DFL-controlled City Council, Mayor and the state’s DFL Attorney General think public safety is a “privilege” and crime is society’s fault

The common factor is the DFL.

I’ve had a couple of DFLs claim I, among other GOPs, “want Minneapolis to fail“. They cite a couple of online polls taken by my friend (and one of about six actual journalists in the Twin Cities) Bill Glahn showing lots of conservatives don’t think the city can be saved.

Speaking for myself? It’s not true.

37 years ago this past Saturday, just out of college, I moved to Minneapolis (and, a few years later, Saint Paul – because it was a place with huge opportunity, that a recent college grad with almost no money and without a tech degree and a really nice entry level salary (I didn’t get one of those for another 8 years) could afford to live in.

A friend of mine got an apartment, back then. Nice, brand new one-bedroom place – $400 a month. After inflation, probably $1,000 today. So tell me what a 1 bedroom in a brand new building in a neighborhood where a single 22 year old woman can live without a full time escort costs today?

In 1986, when I was working as a producer on the Don Vogel show, I booked a writer from the Fodor travel guide on the show. He’d just written an article calling Minneapolis and St. Paul “the Athens of the modern era“ – and he was not alone. Other publications shared the consesus – the Twin Cities were “the next big thing”, economically and culturally.

It was an amazing time to be here. And that was the place I wanted my kids to have, when the time came.

Something sure screwed up along the way, didn’t it?

The place is economically plateaued, *at best*. People respond “But look at all the Fortune 1000 companies!”, to which I respond “Sure – it can still be a good place to live and work, if you frequent the Guthrie and the club level at Target Center”.

But if you’re that kid getting out of school today? Usually economic stagnation comes with deflation. But thanks to the Met Council’s meddling, Minneapolis and Saint Paul housing stock is harder to find, AND hideously expensive, AND increasingly cheap (to build, not to rent) ticky-tack stick and frame apartments with the build quality of an IKEA dresser.

As to crime? Crime was bad in the ’80s, and got worse in the ’90s. But there was a general sense that those responsible thought it was a *bad* thing, and gave the appearance (outside the month before a “red wave” election) they wanted to do something about it. If the President of the Minneapolis City Council had called public safety a “privilege” in 1985, Walt Dziedzic would have led a mob of union pipefitters down from Northeast – back when Northeast was a blue collar neighborhood, not an “urban life” theme park for hipsters – and tarred and feathered her. If Attorney General Humphrey would have written an op-ed supporting defunding the MPD, someone would have checked him in for a 72 hour hold.

The Twin Cities are *not* better; they have not “moved forward“, they haven’t become “more vibrant,“ it’s just more dangerous, more expensive – and more segregated, especially by class.

I would love to see a rebirth of what the Twin Cities were – a hotbed of economic and scientific and artistic creativity and opportunity, and a place where young people of all backgrounds can afford to get established. A place where “vibrancy“ isn’t a punchline.

Can anybody possibly be delusional enough to think the current regime can bring that about?

As to the “polls” – should Minneapolis be saved? Sure.

Can it be, without a 180° political turn around? I’m afraid not.

Is it worth it? That’s its own people to decide.

30 ideas ago, New Yorkers decided New York City was worth saving. And they did it – they elected Rudy Giuliani (and other cities in the NYC metro area followed suit; Jersey City elected Brett Schundler, one of my personal political heroes). And a few years of hard work paid off; NYC went from being a high-crime toilet with a First Class section, to being one of the safest cities in America; a second Golden Age of New York followed closely.

NYC is in the middle of squandering that legacy – and there’s no way they’re electing another Giuliani, since the “Great Sort” has driven the Giuliani voters upstate or waaaay out onto Long Island.

As to Minneapolis? As long as the white, upper-middle-class, ultra-“progressive” laptop-class members continue to control everything about Minneapolis, there really is no hope.

And that’s a shame. The city used to have so much to offer, not just to them, but to *everyone*.

Shot: Representative Omar with a devastating riposte to Jim Schultz, GOP candidate for Attorney General, giving us all a civics lesson:

Chaser: Keith Ellison, himself giving, in turn, a, uh, civics lesson of his own:

Which is it?

Is prosecuting violent local crime a job the AGO does when asked? Or is Keith Ellison a caped crusader patrolling the streets and heading off crime…

…badly and half-heartedly, and not at all until a month before an election?

The pastoral calm of the Warndt Forest in the Rhine Valley had been broken on September 7th, 1939; the soothing sounds of nature quickly replaced with the creak of tank tracks, the roar of trucks, and the stomping of men on the march.  Only three days earlier, Germany’s western frontier had become a potential battlefield as Britain and France had declared war over Berlin’s invasion of Poland.  For the second time in a generation, the Franco-German border would be a scene of intense conflict.

But the soldiers on the move were not members of the Wehrmacht.  Most of Germany’s border towns had been cleared of both soldiers and civilians with the coming of a Second World War.  These men were members of the French Second Army Group, part of 11 divisions and the opening wave of a planned 44 division invasion of Germany that would pull enemy forces away from a beleaguered Poland and dive deep into Germany’s industrial core.  In all, the Allies had an estimated 110 divisions they could turn against Germany while the Nazis had, at most, 22 undermanned divisions to repel any such attack.

A week into the Second War World, France was in German territory.  The outcome of the conflict rested on Paris and London’s willingness to stay on the offensive.

A French soldier inspects a German poster in the Saarland during the French invasion of Germany

In some respects, September 7th, 1939 was a date that France had planned on for 20 years.  

Since the end of the Great War, military and political leaders in both France and Britain had sought to emulate an “Entente-lite” coalition to box in Germany in the event of a future conflict.  While an alliance of new, smaller nations like Czechoslovakia and Poland could hardly match the industrial output and manpower of a Tsarist-era Russia, any tangible military threat in the east would ensure that if another conflict began, Germany would again find itself gored on the horns of a two-front war.  To cement such a position, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia would form the “Little Entente” with French oversight, while Paris signed a direct defensive alliance with Poland in 1921.  The French-Polish Treaty assumed that France would take offensive action against Germany within three days of starting mobilization while launching a full-scale assault within 15 days, presumably while Poland would fight any rearguard action to buy time.  Read the rest of this entry »

Ted Nugent/Oathkeepers poll shows a supermajority of Americans blame “woke” politicians for the crime wave.

Wait – did I say Ted Nugent/Oathkeepers? I meant Harvard:

The correct answer to the poll is “yes’ to both, of course.

Sixteen years ago, Rochelle Olson and the Strib put out one of the yellowest bits of reporting there has ever been – a hatchet job against CD5 GOP candidate Alan Fine, who was up against Keith Ellison in his first run for Congress. A month before the election, Olson wrote a piece about an incident where Alan Fine was arrested for domestic abuse – somehow, without finding room to mention that there was no physical evidence, that he was never charged, that Fine eventually got custody of their son (which doesn’t generally happen for men with domestic abuse raps) and that in fact his soon-to-be-ex had been arrested for abuse later.

On my show, she said “there just wasn’t room” for all that extra information; I pointed out how she or her “editors” could have easily fit the relevant information into the story with room to spare.

Anyway, the old Rochelle is back.

Sunday, the Strib ran a piece, headlined:

Bad Republican Draft Dodger Pounces On Good Democrat.

Well, no. That wasn’t the title. But close enough. Here’s the real thing:

GOP opponent who never served criticizes Gov. Tim Walz’s exit from National Guard

The rest of the story doesn’t get any better.

Joseph Eustice, a 32-year veteran of the guard who led the same battalion as Walz, said the governor fulfilled his duty.

“He was a great soldier,” Eustice said. “When he chose to leave, he had every right to leave.”

Eustice said claims to the contrary are ill-informed and possibly sour grapes by a soldier who was passed over for the promotion to command sergeant major that went to Walz.

Eustice is indeed listed as a “Command Sergeant Major” (CSM) in the 125th Field Artillery, the Mankato National Guard unit in which Walz served.

Olson’s article refers to one “Command Sergeant Major” whose stories are dogging the Governor – Tom Behrends, whose story first came out four years ago.

But there are a total of three. Rochelle Olson and the Strib didn’t seem to think that was worthy of a mention.

And while CSM Eustice blames “sour grapes” by someone who maybe got passed over, all three of the men who’ve gone on record against Walz were Command Sergeants Major – the same rank Walz held before accepting demotion on retirement. And one of those exceptionally senior NCOs was in fact the CSM of the entire 34th Infantry Division – two levels of hierarchy above Walz. There weren’t many positions to move up to in the MInnesota Guard.

That retired divisional CSM is Command Sergeant Major Doug Julin – the senior NCO in the entire 34th Infantry Division:

Command Sergeant Major (Retired) Douglas L. Julin most recent assignment was as the Division Command Sergeant Major of the 34th “Red Bull” Infantry Division, headquartered in Rosemount, Minnesota

If Julin is upset about not being promoted, one wonders exactly how.

But Julin is upset:

Julin said he spoke with Walz directly in 2018 after Behrends sent a letter to the media about Walz’s military record. He said he expressed his frustration and concerns to Walz, who said he appreciated Julin talking to him about it, but “that was about it,” Julin said.

Julin told Alpha News he doesn’t really take issue with Walz using the CSM title after not completing all of the requirements to earn the rank. What matters to him most is how he walked away from his troops.

He wanted to share his story ahead of the election because he believes Minnesotans deserve better.

“Why should we be quiet? He uses the military to promote himself when he abandoned his soldiers,” he said. “He let the soldiers down. How can you be entrusted to be the governor of Minnesota when if something is not to your liking, you quit or you serve yourself and not others?”

Olson’s piece studiously avoids mentioning Julin, or the other retired CSM, Paul Herr – who spoke with Alphanews over the summer:

And apparently Olson and the Strib are counting on readers not investigating their claims, and just gullibly accepting their assertions as fact. CSM Eustice said:

Somehow, the Strib, Olson or the editors apparently found room to mention Jensen’s draft record (he became eligible for the draft as the Vietnam War and conscription were both winding down) and repeatedly chanting Jensen “didn’t serve” – like the vast majority of men in his age bracket whose numbers weren’t drawn in the waning days of the war.

Oh, yes, this will be a subject on Saturday.

Rebecca Brannon – one of about seven or eight actual journalists in the Twin Cities – went to downtown Minneapolis Friday night/Saturday morning.

Or so she would have us believe:

Of course, it can’t be; I’m reliably informed that “downtown is back“, and that anyone who disagrees is a suburban tourist who gets his entire world view from Tucker Carlson.

But boy, if it weren’t fake news, it would be pretty grim, wouldn’t it?

Know a high school girl – public, private, charter or home-schooled – with an interest in public spoeaking? Let her know about “Speaking Proudly“. It’s an eight minute speech on a subject related to our nation. This years subject is “Securing the Blessings oif Liberty”. $2,000 first price, plus lots more! Let the high school girl in your life with a yen toward public speaking know!

Here’s our song list for today:

To: Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan
From: Mitch Berg, Irasicble Peasant
Re: Judging A Book By The Cover?

Lt. Governor Flanagan,

Two data points aren’t a trend – but you do seem to be trying to make your attire a campaign issue.

We talked about this a few months back – your, um, exchange with “Baaaaahb from FRID-ley” over your, well, attire:

As I noted at the time, I found the whole thing implausibe at best, gratingly classist at worst: you are, after all, one of the four most powerful people in MInnesota. You are arguably the most powerful Lieutenant Governor in recent Minnesota history, since the Governor only serves at the pleasure of the extreme “progressive” caucus you lead, and to court whom Governor Walz put you on his ticket in the first place.

And it scarcely needs to be said, you’re a member of the political class, from a social echo chamber in you can do pretty much anything you want, without any consequences whatsoever (and, indeed, have done just that). You could wear aluminum foil pants and a 2LiveCrew t-shirt, or pretty much anything but a MAGA cap, and nobody significant would say “boo” about it.

Indeed – since you’ve never worked in the private sector, I have to ask – have you ever worked at a job where your attire was even a factor?

But no matter – because while neither I nor anyone but the (apocryphal) Baaaaahb from FRID-ley cares what you wear to, uh, work, you most certainly seem to:

I’m going to go out on a short and sturdy limb and guess that maybe half of Minnesotans know what the Lieutenant Governor is.

A little further out? Of that half, maybe 25% could pick you out of a lineup, whatever your attire, unless you were wearing a T-shirt that said “I’M PEGGY FLANAGAN, THE SITTING LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR” in big letters.

And of that (checks figures) 12.5% of the state, I’m going to hazard a guess than maybe 10% would have an opinion, positive or negative, about what you wear.

If I may be so bold, it strikes me as if you, one of the four most powerful people in Minnesota, are trying to find some little bit of grievance, however contrived, to wrap yourself in, to generate “sympathy” in the home stretch of the election.

But then, I’m just a middle-Minnesotan taxpaying schmuck, so nobody cares what I think, either.

That is all.

Angela Lansbury died earlier this week. She was just short of her 97th birthday.

I’m from a generation, sociology and geography that mostly knows her from Murder She Wrote and thousand viewings of Beauty and the Beast when my kids were little, and the bit of trivia that she was in, and exceptional, in one of my favorites, Gaslight with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer.

But if I ever want to know how important an actor really is, today as in 2004, I go to Sheila O’Malley:

If you think there is another career like Angela Lansbury’s – if you think a comparison can be made to somebody else’s career – you’re wrong. There IS nobody else. If Judy Garland were still around, doing television and movies and Broadway, then MAYBE. But other than that: Angela Lansbury stands (stood) alone. Angela Lansbury never rested on her laurels, and never stopped working. She showed up everywhere. She was bone-chilling in The Manchurian Candidate. She was sassy and insouciant as Elizabeth Taylor’s teenage sister in National Velvet. She was Auntie Mame. She was Mrs. Lovett. She was Jessica Fletcher, dammit.

It’s high time I watched Gaslight again.

Parents shut down a Dearborn, Michigan school board meeting over the distribution of “woke” books:

A school-board meeting in Dearborn, Mich. was shut down earlier this week by hundreds of protesters opposing the circulation of LGBTQ books across the city’s public-school system.

Viral videos recorded by a Detroit Free Press reporter circulated on Twitter showing pandemonium breaking out at the meeting Monday night. Many of the protesters carried signs in English and Arabic: “Keep Your Dirty Books in the Closet,” “Stop Grooming Our Kids,” and “Homosexuality Big Sin,” some read.

Darn those redneck fascists with their signs in English and…

…uh, what now?

Ooof. A protected class going after a couple of protected classes. That’s gotta be awkward.

Wonder what Rashida Tlaib has to say about it?